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Kayak Plans and other Wooden Boat Designs

Guillemot Kayaks has been offering complete plans and instructions for building high performance wooden kayaks since 1993. Each kayak plan includes all the forms drawn out at full size and individually. No copying or lofting is required, just glue the plans to your form material and cut out around the lines. Each plan is printed out as an original to minimize any chance of errors being introduced in the reproduction process.

We have plans for the following:

Each boat is meticulously designed in a process that typically takes several years of analysis, designing and testing. I am first and foremost interested on how the finished boat handles on the water and concentrate my design efforts towards making the best performing boats you can find. My years of paddling experience comes into play in every boat I design and my years of building boats ensures that the design will be something you can build and enjoy.

I have created several "Families" of designs where the different boats in each family bear a similar design aesthetic and related performance profile. For a high level description of these different design families please refer to the links below.

Upcoming Events

If you want to build a lightweight, rugged, and beautiful small boat, combining thin strips of wood with epoxy and fiberglass will make a cartoppable, low-maintenance, and gorgeous vessel. Nick Schade has been building strip-built boats for over 30 years. He has written two of the standard texts on the subject, Building Strip-Planked Boats and The Strip-Built Sea Kayak, and his efforts have guided thousands of people through building their own boats using the popular strip-planked method.

I am very excited to announce that I will be teaching a week-long on-the-water sea kayaking class in Maine this summer. If you have one of my designs, or you are interested in learning how to handle a sea kayak on the ocean, this is your chance to gain some great experience, while enjoying one of the prettiest places to paddle in the world.

Join Guillemot Kayaks and Sea Sherpa Kayak in Maine.
This five day event features the East Coast's finest sea kayaking and highlights a chance to try the amazing wooden kayaks by Nick Schade in the conditions they were designed for.